Committee backs bill to streamline LEA–higher education data sharing for direct admissions
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Summary
SB152 passed the House Education Committee with an 8–2 recommendation. Sponsors said the bill will ease student access to direct-admit opportunities by allowing LEAs to share defined student data elements with the Utah System of Higher Education under administrative rule safeguards.
Senator McCall presented SB152 to authorize and standardize collaboration between local education agencies and the Utah System of Higher Education for purposes such as direct admissions and concurrent-enrollment outreach. The bill would permit routine data sharing under safeguards and with opt-out provisions.
Andy Stallings, deputy commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, told the committee the board plans to adopt an administrative rule to list specific student data elements to be shared (examples given to the committee included name, contact information, SSID, ACT/SAT scores, cumulative GPA, date of birth and a randomly selected course/instructor for identity verification). Stallings said data would be shared with institutions only after a student indicates an intent to apply or enroll through the admitutah.org platform, and existing privacy protections would be maintained.
Representative Peck and others asked for more prescriptive statutory language about which fields are shared rather than leaving the set of elements solely to administrative rule. Senator McCall and Stallings said they would work on specifying elements and that phase‑3 pilot work with Provo School District informed the proposal. The committee voted to favorably recommend SB152 8–2, with Representatives Peck and Lisonbee recorded in opposition.